


Feast or Famine

by ClutchPaper



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Veth Bernatto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 20:46:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17669792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClutchPaper/pseuds/ClutchPaper
Summary: Goblins eat what they can find, and so does anyone who is starving.A short study on Veth's struggle with food as she becomes Nott the Brave.





	Feast or Famine

**Author's Note:**

> This discusses Goblin eating habits, which have been touched on in the series. But, this might be gross or disturbing to certain readers, so please be warned.
> 
> Also, written in one evening with no editor, so, forgive any mistakes.

It was starvation. That was why she found herself desperately clinging to the hunk of raw horse meat. It was because she had been starved. The red and white muscle in her claws was just reeking of coppery blood, and she felt as if her reflex should be to gag. But she held it, clutched close so no one could snatch it from her. 

And they would if they could. It had been days since she had managed to grab ‘food’ as these disgusting creatures deemed anything that was barely edible. She’d avoided the previous meal, she’d watched them cleaning the limbs and saw pink fingers and toes. The handful of oats and grains that was in the bag that this now butchered horse had on his pack… that had been unsatisfying, and her teeth were meant for tearing at things, not passively chewing. It hadn’t filled her, but it kept her from fainting yesterday. 

Today though, she held this. Protein. Meat. Sustaining food.

She was not welcome at the bonfires nearby, and this might be taken if she tried to approach to attempt to cook it.

This smaller, scrawnier, form was already emaciated. It was bones and elbows, sunken sockets and sharp teeth. 

Huddled in a filthy heap, having escaped attention for the moment, after being dogged all day like a slave… Veth tentatively tried to clench her mouth around this tough stringy meal.

Goblins were made for this. She tore through without issue, a mass in her mouth as she shredded it between the fangs she’d been cursed with. 

It was easy, and something lit up in her brain even as she knew this was… not Veth. Not Halfling. Not civilized.

Starving, and there was food. Finally.

Without effort, her fingers moved in a strange twitchy fashion, making sure none of the meat escaped, moving, readjusting, rotating, the movements she’d seen the other goblins use.

By the time she was licking her fingers, wiping her mouth, and finally no longer radiating ‘hunger’ from every pore of her being, she swallowed hard a few times.

It was easy once she started.

It was frighteningly easy, if she let herself just… act. Instinct.

Goblins were creatures of all-or-nothing. She’d been here long enough, with Yeza and Luke… and now by herself… they weren’t lazy or half-hearted in anything they did. It was always vicious, driven, obsessively focused. If they wanted to fight, they could not be reasoned with. If they wanted to eat, they would devour anything they could get their horrible claws on. If they were angry, they were enraged.

She was smarter than this. Veth looked down at her own horrible green claws. She was smarter, wasn’t she? She had morality. They hadn’t taken that from her. No matter how angry, or scared, or tired, or hungry she became… she was not a goblin. The spirit was the same, it was just trapped. It was being told to act one way by this awful body. By this goblin mind, with impulses and drives and instincts that repulsed who she really was. 

Veth took some fistfuls of snow and washed her hands and face with it, feeling the frozen flakes hit her exposed teeth was jarringly painful, and she cupped her hands over her mouth and huffed into her fingers to try to warm them again. 

There were still rules. There was still someone not necessarily good… but who knew what good was, in charge. Veth was not gone.

\-----------------

There was a snicker of laughter from Drood, which caught on within the group. They all chortled and chuffed as chunks of their meal spat from their lips. 

Veth glanced up but kept her head down, spooning the meat from the bowl into her mouth quickly, so as to avoid losing it. The rough wooden bowl had been badly carved from some partially rotten log, and probably never washed, but goblin stomachs could keep almost anything down. So, whatever bacterial growth covered the bottom of this… she wouldn’t be missing the food later.

Henk, a flabby goblin with folds of skin that did not seem to have anything to do with him being overweight, stirred the pot they were eating from, and stared at her.

Gods, had she done something? They knew what she was, Drood had helped kill her. She was the outcast, which usually meant deserving as much cruelty as they could muster. As goblins, they excelled at cruelty.

Checking the faces of the still sniggering goblins, they were also looking at her, and her hand-to-mouth movements slowed. Her chewing slowed. Had they poisoned her? There was no halfling social graces in her movements, was there? 

Startling, she spun to look behind her. Nothing. 

This sent further peals of laughter. They had raided again, and came back with alcohol which they were making quick work of. Though, she wanted some… desperately, she wasn’t allowed to partake. It was for those who went on the raid. And those who sat around her, drunken and giggling, kept staring as if she would get the joke eventually.

It would be horrible. Whatever they were planning. It always was.

“How ya findin’ it?” Henk finally screeched in his awful and broken voice. He kept stirring the pot, and then pulled up the spoon and let the meat slide off and back down in.

Taking a short breath, Veth felt the meal slide from her fingers back into her bowl, and she looked down at it, expecting some mystery to be uncovered in it’s poorly seasoned lumps.

More laughter.

Was it poison? Gods, part of her hoped it was poison. 

The thought made her throat clench. That wasn’t right. Forcing her mind away from the hopeless loop she could spiral into and denied herself every day, she gave a tense grin.

“Alright, you’ve got me. Am I poisoned or something?” 

Drood toppled off the mound of rotting hay he was seated on, and his feet waggled in the air. “Not smart! Not smart!” He kicked so hard he hit another goblin that slammed it’s fist into his groin, and Drood curled away, letting out high peals of pain.

Henk let out a snort at the sound of Drood’s agony, and then repeated the motion with the spoon. “Hope this one was yours.”

Blinking in confusion, Veth looked back to her meal. “Mine?”

As the joke continued, she was lost at the punchline. 

Another voice, although she didn’t recognize from the mix of the horrible goblins around her spoke up, “This’n had some meat’n it. Hers wasn’t nothin’ but bones when last I seen it.”

Veth felt a high warbling shriek begin to escape. It was not from a place of sadness, but a deep, deep rage building in the pit of her stomach. They’d done it. They’d made her a true monster.

Screaming with a primal fury that was fueled by months of abuse and shame, with a surprising speed, her sharp little claws dug into Henk’s face. Regardless of form, she was quick, and he was tackled to the ground by the pure surprise of her turning on him.

Had they expected tears? 

“**** you! You filthy rat-******* ******!” Veth slammed her fingers into his eyes, and gouged. 

The others were reacting, her surprise attack had done what she wanted though. Henk was screaming, bloody and weeping. 

Hands were grabbing her, beating her, slamming her face into the ground as she was flipped onto her stomach, and kicked in the head. 

“**** you! **** you!” She cursed them through spit and blood and dirt.

If she’d been brave, she would have tried to avenge this child, to fight more, instead of just scream and swear.

But then, eventually, everything went black.

\---------------

Caleb was oddly still here, for someone who clearly was not comfortable with goblins as a whole. He looked at her like she was waiting to pounce for a while. But that was understandable.That is what reasonable people do. And he was very smart.

Their first few days together, finding one another still curled up nearby, had been a surprise to them both.

To try to put him at ease, as the first non-monstrous humanoid to not try to kill her, Nott had been very careful about what she let him see. Hood up, mask on as often as possible. Drink from her flask quickly and with her back to him. Keep her knobby lanky hands hidden in her cloak. 

But, as she stared at the two woodland animals she’d hunted, she felt her stomach ache in hunger. The rabbit could be shared between them, leaving most to Caleb, as he was painfully thin. She wondered how he managed to have the energy to stand most of the time, much less cast those amazing spells. Food. The boy was starving, and he needed food.

The squirrel was barely enough for one person, and she could eat it as she went. Dangling the rabbit from her waist, she brought the grey squirrel to her mouth, bending it at the spine. Her teeth could tear through anything, and bones had nutritional value. A few mouthfuls in, she wondered if halfling-her, REAL her, would be able to eat rats and insects and whatever other thing crossed her pallet. Or was it only because goblins could eat it, and so they did?

Entering the clearing with the rodent still partially chewed through, she realized the campsite was much closer than she’d thought.

Caleb was watching her, she hadn’t been trying to stealth into the area or anything.

His blue eyes looked at her with surprise for a moment, and then mellowed. Not into repulsion, or disappointment, but to acceptance of information.

Nott’s stomach churned. Those blue eyes, so like Luke’s, seeing her tearing into an animal raw, like a savage creature. Disgusting. Repulsive. Goblin.

“Ah. Uh… good hunting?” His attention darted to the rabbit at her side, and there was a hungry greed there. One that she knew well.

“It’s not a deer or anything, but it’s...”

“Better than nothing, ja?” Caleb cleared his throat, and motioned to the small fire that he’d been tending while she got them their meal. He gave that lips-only smile that seemed to be all he had.

“You don’t have to--I mean, you’re very tall, but you’re not -- I guess... when was the last time you had a good proper meal?” Nott stuttered and stumbled over her words, trying not to pressure him, or make him feel like she was being nosy. He was not open about his history. Which was fine. He was Caleb Widogast, and he was magical, and he had bright-clever blue eyes. That was enough for now.

She came over, still holding the partially eaten squirrel, it’s entrails squelched between her claws. Settling next to the fire, she set it carefully in the grass, trading it for a small dagger and beginning to clean the rabbit. 

Her goblin drives still screamed at her that she was hungry. She was hungry, and she had food. Just eat!

But, that just made skinning this rabbit more important. 

“Oh. Ages, a long, long time ago.” Caleb’s voice became softer towards the end, and she saw that sad smile on his lips again, as he tried to grin at her. Tried not to seem too dour.

“It’s not home-cooking, but it’s food, eh?” Forcing a sharpened stick through the mouth of the cleaned rabbit, she slammed it on a rock a few times to force it all the way through, and then leaned it over the fire. “I never was a very good cook--”

“I… am not going to make you wait for me.”

Attention pulled from where she was settling the stick so it wouldn’t fall into the flames, but would be sturdy enough to stand on it’s own, Nott turned towards him. “Wait?”

“Ja. You can eat. It will be at least an hour … you don’t have to wait on my account.” Shifting a bit, his eyes genuinely reflecting his words, he pointed a finger at the corpse still in the grass.

Nott looked down at the grey fur, and picked it up. Checking with his reaction. 

There was none.

She took a small bite, and there was a pop of liquid that ran down her chin. Her stomach demanded she fill it, but she knew what this… HOW this made her look. “You’re very kind to me, Caleb.”

He stiffened, and there was a flittering confusion on his face. Clearing his throat, he scratched at his arm and let out a strangled sigh, “Well, you’re very kind to me, Nott. Which is more difficult.”

Putting the food on her lap, Nott took a drink from her flask. “Not many people would let a goblin travel with them. Goblins kill people, and burn fields, and steal children.”

“Perhaps, then, Nott, I am lucky. I have no fields or children, and killing me would do you no good, I am nothing to eat, and not worth much.”

“I guess I’d better get you rich, fat, and married, then.” Nott chuckled, and was startled when he did the same. It was the same somewhat baleful mood as his smile, but it was something she’d never heard before. He’d thought she was funny. Like a friend, a human and a halfling. He’d listened to her. He’d laughed with her!

Reaching to pick up the food again, as he adjusted the rabbit on the pike, Nott decided to take another risk. “I… uh...don’t--- my teeth are a mess. I don’t like people-- proper people--non-monster people--watching me eat. It’s gross, and there’s blood… but… sometimes, I just-- I crave meat. Like, I need it, and sometimes… cooking is--” No one civilized had been around long enough for her to express her frustrations with her… form. Her thin lips couldn’t fully close over all the crooked and jagged bones that sprang from her gums, and sometimes, she felt like she NEEDED meat to be uncooked. It wasn’t about taste, it was like when she was pregnant with Luke and wanted fish or strawberries or the coldest milk, it was a craving.

“My little friend, if I was going to judge you, or you judge me, we would part ways. But, if you will travel with me, then I will travel with you.” 

Nott picked at the fur, and threw a tuft of it onto the fire. “If you’re sure you don’t mind…”

With a long sigh, she followed as Caleb’s eyes focused on one aspect of her after another. Nott squirmed under his attention, fidgeting with the carcass she was still holding, and very aware of the blood on her mouth, the stringy meat in her teeth. “I don’t mind you, Nott.”

As she watched the rabbit cook, she gave him a quick nod, and began to eat again.


End file.
